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Monday, April 30, 2012

Hi it is me Shabir and I have some bad news. I have accidentally left my 500 GB hard drive at uni and I believe it is too late for me to get it today, the good news is that I have backed up all my data on my hard drive at home. I hope someone found my hard drive because I actually rely on it for working at uni and if I can't find it then I might have to work at home because the backup hard drive needs a plug and it might be tricky for my to bring it to uni. So if anyone found it please let me know. I left it in the computer room next to the base room on the forth floor

Sunday, April 29, 2012

With just four weeks to go before the end of the academic year, CG Arts & Animation @ UCA Rochesteris powering up for its busiest period. Soon, little slips of white paper will appear on keyboards everywhere scrawled with the words, 'Don't touch - Rendering!' and the course team will go about the campus shouting into the pale faces of sleep-deprived students, imploring them to 'Back-up your files' and then, 'Back-up your files again!'. The air will take on the sickly-sweet chemical tang of energy drinks, a heat haze will rise from long-suffering harddrives, and at least one student will burst into tears for no clear or discernible reason. It's an exciting time, a fraught time and a transformative time, as cg assets born of ambitious production pipelines seek to become greater than the sum of their parts.

Right now, those 'ambitious production pipelines' are pumping out exciting appetisers and this month's PWTM begins with a look at what our third years are in the midst of.

But first, I'd like to take a moment to welcome our new audience of specially invited blog-watchers - our Post-With-The-Mosters, who join us from the world of professional animation and cgi associated industries and who have agreed to follow our students' progress and offer feedback, advice and insider knowledge if and when inspired to do so. Your numbers are growing all the time, and I speak for everyone on CGAA when I say thanks very much for taking the time to look this way every once in a while.

And so to business! Our current third year projects constitute a satisfying mix of environment and character design projects, and original animated shorts. In the mix we've got a reboot of a classic fairytale, as the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel goes all Ivana Trump-meets-James Bond and gets a supervillain's HQ. We've got pastry chefs, imperious pixies, pianists, peckish birds and patron saints all in varying stages of completion as they're prepped for performance. We've got burnished time machines in cluttered Victorian workshops, an air-born isle at sail in an ocean of cloud, marine animal-inspired aeroplanes designed for a game concept in which an evil corporation is up for an old-fashioned kicking, and Famine's tower - a castle fit for one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse...

On Thursday 19th April, CGAA Year 2 had their Transcription crit - a summation of their 12 weeks work adapting and transcribing existing sources into new CG content. With projects encompassing the grim imaginings of H. P. Lovecraft, archetypes of folklore, and the architectural feats of ancient civilizations it was a fascinating submission and yet more evidence that our soon-to-be Year 3s are a creative force with which to be reckoned. A selection of their Transcription-derived work follows.

They did it! They bloody well did it! In an infamous CGAA rite of passage, our first years were challenged to devise, execute and post-produce an original one-minute hand-drawn animation - and all in the space of 5 weeks. At the outset of the unit they were apportioned randomly an ordinarily inanimate object and a specific demeanour to attribute it. If you've ever wondered how afastidious blimp, pugnacious teapot, dying candlestick,flamboyant cuckoo-clock,hyperactive chaise-longue, wounded bubblegum dispenser or giddy pot plant might behave if given sixty seconds of limelight, you now have your answer! Professional animator, Meg Bisineer, who worked with our first years for the duration of the unit, particularly enjoyed the following anthropomorphic frolics...

After the hours and hours bent over a lightbox, you might be forgiven for thinking that the CGAA first years are now relaxing their weary fingers - but no. Their sixth and final project, Commission, is already a week underway, and it's nothing less than the grand finale of their year one experience in which they're expected to bring together everything they've learned so far for one last cg hurrah. Dr Peter Klappa - bioscientist at the University of Kent, friend to CGAA and Spectacular Science collaborator - has once again commissioned our year one students to bring a selection of topical bioscientific scenarios to vivid cg life. It's early days, with students kick-starting their research and development with provisional thumbnails, early concept art and speculative renders - a selection of which follows.

A number of our Year 2 students are now out on work placement. Orkney Trow creator, Justin Easton, has just completed his first week of five at Nexus Productions, which has seen him getting to grips with 3D Studio Max. You can follow Justin's progress at Nexus by going hereand using the 'newer post' option to view his latest entries. Meanwhile, Butch Auntie, the live event visuals and projection company, has taken a baker's dozen of CG students under its wing, with Dayle, Molly, Jono, Andriana, Kayleigh, Daniel, Katy, Paul, Sam, Sasha, Ryan, Lyn-Dae and Domantas all developing original work for a top-secret project for a hush-hush client... In a few days, Alex Pinnockinterns with CinemaNX - the production company behind the 2010 animated feature, Chico & Rita. Best of luck to all of our intrepid interns - be amazing! - and many thanks to this year's participating companies.

The last word.

“It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.” Leonardo Da Vinci